7:10: Amie’s Food Report:

7:25: From “The Redeye Collective”: Defending the Canadian Wheat Board

Stephen Harper’s efforts to eliminate the Canadian Wheat Board hit a roadblock December 7 when a Federal Court judge ruled that the government had to consult farmers before getting rid of the Wheat Board. Terry Boehm is president of the National Farmers Union. He explains why the Wheat Board is so important to Canadian farmers.

8:18: The International: The World Outside Canada

It’s been a troubled year for the alliance between the United States and Pakistan. In the most recent incident, NATO helicopter gunships killed 24 Pakistani border guards near the Afghan border. Irfan Husain is the author of Faultlines: Pakistan, Islam and the West. He’s also a regular columnist for the Pakistani daily newspaper Dawn.

Workers aren’t being allowed to freely assemble and show their discontent with Rio Tinto Alcan’s business practices. A court order issued last week on behalf of RTA restricts the number of protesters to 20 and orders they stay 150m back from the property. Apparently, management didn’t want to have to confront workers on the way into the smelter.

In the same way Electro-Motive and Navistar used strikes and lockouts to quietly move their operations elsewhere, RTA wants to use this action to break the union and replace them with contractors. Contractors are great, very few obligations for an employer.

The Youngstown, OH area has seen 11 small quakes since last spring, and now a moratorium has been instated in the area to keep future fracking from occurring while seismologists reinvestigate the quakes.

Postmedia goes nationwide with a story originating at the Gazette which discusses how “misconceptions” about Quebec’s energy surplus are behind opposition to shale gas fracking. Just a coincidence that this story came out on the same day as the earthquake story, I suppose.